With more than one million page views and more than 4,000 items, this blog provides news and commentary on public policy, business and economic issues related to the $3 billion California stem cell agency, officially known as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine(CIRM). David Jensen, a retired California newsman, has published this blog since January 2005. His email address is djensen@californiastemcellreport.com.

Friday, July 31, 2015

During the past week, followers of the stem cell world have been treated to sharply contrasting perspectives on the likely success of
therapies involving regenerative medicine.

One perspective was bleak; the other robustly optimistic.

One borrowed slightly from the “Tale of Two Cities,” with a
headline that said “Tale of seven stem cell stock woes….”

The other carried a headline that said “global stem cell
market predicted to reach $40 billion in five years….”

One was a story about hard-eyed investors backing away from
stem cell research. The other was about a bright, near-term future for the
field.

Don Gibbons, chief communications officer at California’s stem cell agency, wrote about that bright global market on his agency’s blog. He said that the $40 billion figure was generated by the worldwide
consulting firm Frost and Sullivan, which was promoting its study of the
field. The 2014 report is going for as much as $7,500, a price tag that helps
illustrate one of the features of the stem cell field: It needs a lot of cash.

Indeed, Gibbons noted that Frost and Sullivan cautioned that
funding for early stage, clinical stem cell work is not abundant.

Which brings us to Paul Knoepfler’s tale of stem cell stock “woe.”
He is a stem cell researcher and blogger at UC Davis, which has benefited
mightily from cash from the $3 billion California stem cell agency.

He wrote,

“Lately, stem cell companies have not been doing so well
financially to put it mildly and their stock prices have generally been going
down, down, and down further. A lower stock price and market capitalization are
not just a headache for investors and bad for the companies, but they also
strongly interfere with the progress of the clinical science.”

And he asked,

“To be blunt, why are their stocks doing so miserably?”

Knoepfler did not really attempt to answer that question.
However, it is clear that stem cell stock prices are down because nobody wants
to buy them. The reason? Investors do not expect to make money any time soon by
purchasing shares in those firms, which struggle perennially to raise cash.

That is a financial reality that the $3 billion California
stem cell agency needs to fully integrate into its plans for spending its last
$800 million, which is slated to run out in less than five years.

The agency’s goal is to produce a stem cell therapy as
promised to California voters 11 years ago when they approved creation of the
agency, which will cost the state about $6 billion, including interest, before
the effort expires.

Without backing of industry, there will be no therapies. But
the priorities of a business are not necessarily the same as the agency’s. Profits
necessarily come first with a business. Otherwise it will vanish into a
financial abyss. Witness the dumping of the nation’s first hESC clinical trial
by Geron, in which the agency invested $24 million only three months before the
trial was summarily terminated by the company for financial reasons.

The California stem cell agency’s president, Randy Mills,
should understand the vagaries of all this better than most. He made his career
as a biotech business executive, not as a researcher. Over the last year, he
has done much to sharpen the focus of the agency and begin to create a clear
path for emergence of a therapy, a “radical” change he has dubbed CIRM 2.0.

Whether he can successfully put together the needs of business and
the needs of science and medicine is perhaps the key question for the
California stem cell agency between now and 2020.

About Me

The California Stem Cell Report is the only nongovernmental website devoted solely to the $3 billion California stem cell agency. The report is published by David Jensen, who worked for 22 years for The Sacramento Bee in a variety of editing positions, including executive business editor and special projects editor. He was the primary editor on the 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning series, "The Monkey Wars" by Deborah Blum, which dealt with opposition to research on primates. Jensen served as a press aide in the 1974 campaign and first administration of Gov. Jerry Brown. (Time served: two years and one week.) He writes from his sailboat on the west coast of Mexico with occasional visits to land. Jensen began writing about the stem cell agency in 2005, noting that it is an unprecedented effort that uniquely combines big science, big business, big academia, big politics, religion, ethics and morality as well as life and death. The California Stem Cell Report has been identified as one of the best stem cell sites on the Internet. Its readership includes the media (both mainstream and science), a wide range of academic/research institutions globally, the NIH and California policy makers.